Tokkōbana (Kamikaze Flower)

The flower in the photo at right, which grows in Kagoshima Prefecture, is
called tokkōbana in Japanese. Tokkōbana literally means
"special attack flower" but can also be translated
as "kamikaze flower." In recent years, a story has spread that kamikaze
pilots dropped these flowers from their planes as they passed over Mount Kaimon
at the southernmost point of mainland Japan on the way to Okinawa. Also, the
yellow tokkōbana
flowers bloom profusely in May and June near the runway at Kanoya Air Base, which during the war served
as the sortie base for the largest number of kamikaze pilots.

The source of this flower remains a mystery. Several theories of its origin
have been suggested. Kanoya Air Base Museum used to give out free tokkōbana
seed packets, which have written on the back several theories about the source
of these flowers. Some people think that planes
returning to Kanoya from the south during World War II brought the flowers
back attached to their wheels. Others speculate that Navy pilots who loved the beauties
of nature brought them back to the base. Another theory says that the flower is a
species from Mexico.

The tokkōbana flowers play a central role in the 1998 television movie Nijūroku
ya mairi (A Moon Twenty-six Days Old). Three young kamikaze pilots visit a small inn
on the eve before their flights, and they become friends with the
eight-year-old girl at the inn. When they leave in the morning, she gives each
of them a bouquet of yellow tokkōbana flowers that she picked for them.
The three pilots each throw these flowers out on the lower slopes of Mount Kaimon, where today a
huge field of tokkōbana grows.

Hichiro Naemura, who served as a flight instructor at a kamikaze sortie
base and authored several books about kamikaze operations, argues strongly that the true flower of the kamikaze pilots was the
cherry blossom (in an article entitled "True kamikaze flower: Is yellow postwar non-native variety the
kamikaze flower?"). Moreover, the flower called tokkōbana actually
is a non-native species that did not exist in Japan before or during World War
II. The flower appeared at Kanoya Air Base about fifteen years after the end of
the war, and a rumor spread that this was the tokkōbana or kamikaze
flower. Naemura argues convincingly that the "kamikaze flower" was
clearly the cherry blossom, since many historical photos show kamikaze pilots
with cherry blossoms and several last letters of kamikaze pilots refer to cherry
blossoms.

The kamikaze flower provides a fascinating example of how a modern-day legend
can grow with no basis in history. Hichiro Naemura thinks it is regrettable that
people who do not know the history of the kamikaze pilots' association with cherry
blossoms have developed now a misunderstanding of the true story because of the
strong influence of Tetsuya Takeda, who wrote and appeared in the movie Nijūroku
ya mairi (A Moon Twenty-six Days Old) that contains the fictional story of
the tokkōbana.